«School is a fundamental and indispensable aid for spreading the culture of legality and plays an irreplaceable role in training and orienting consciences in the fight against the mafia». This is what the mayor of Cosenza reiterated, Franz Carusoparticipating in the inauguration, at the IC “Fausto Gullo” in A mural against the mafiasthe project created by Rotaract Club of Cosenza and sponsored by the municipal administration.
Through this project the firm will of the Rotaract Club, chaired by Francesco Maria Iannuccito have a positive impact on the territory by donating to the community a work that can be clearly synonymous with raising awareness of the highest values of legality and resilience.
The Mural, work of the artist Erika De Filippisportrays the two most emblematic figures of the fight against the mafia, Giovanni Falcone And Paolo Borsellino, victims of organized crime. “Today’s initiative is significant and with the inauguration of this mural – said Mayor Franz Caruso – it aims to represent the value of the fight against organized crime, because there cannot be full freedom in our society if we continue to be oppressed and conditioned by the mafia presence”.
«We will be free – added Franz Caruso – when we have defeated the mafia, in whatever form it manifests itself. It’s a utopia but I hope we can succeed, in the meantime we have to try.”
The mayor of Cosenza spoke of the mafia and its other characterizations (‘Ndrangheta, Camorra or Sacra Corona Unita) as an “entity no longer linked to the territory and which is losing its original localization characteristics”.
For Franz Caruso «the mafia is today present throughout the national territory and also outside national borders. It is something that devastates territories and affects the growth of entire populations and we have the duty, each in our own part, to stem the advance of organized crime. Indeed, we must work to reject it more and more and perhaps create that utopia so that one day the mafia can be truly eradicated and disappear completely.”
«The institutions must create – remarked Franz Caruso – the conditions to marginalize it, because if there is no work and there is no economy that allows you to live in compliance with the law, organized crime has an easy game. We must ensure that our children have the opportunity to grow up legally and have the prospect of living their lives in our territory, as they would like, realizing their projects and dreams here.”
«This is the objective – he remarked – which we must strive for together to ensure that there is growth, development and employment».
Franz Caruso has no doubts. To do this there is only one way: «respecting the values of legality, which does not only translate into respecting the law, but also into a modus vivendi, because we begin as children to understand the value of legality, respecting the most as simple as queuing at a post office counter, how to fasten your seat belt, wear a helmet, respect the rules and the rights of others.”
The inauguration of the mural was also accompanied by the awarding of two scholarships, the “Maurizio De Rose” awardwhich the Rotaract Club of Cosenza announced for the school children who in their essays best represented what fighting the mafia means for them. (rcs)
